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Substack writers, you need a website

elizabethtai.com

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Re: Substack writers, you need a website

#221

Post by theturtletalks »

jimbokun wrote: post #193
jonahx wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The social networks are big because they have genuine utility. I think this is mostly wrong, and that the social networks are big primarily because they spent money at the right time to create entrenched network effects that allow them to rent-seek ever after. The quality and innovation of the services themselves (especially simple sites like twitter/X) is not the moat. At a technical level, most are easily clone-a…

The network effects ARE the genuine utility.

And you can take advantage of their network effects by implementing a POSSE system. Publish on your own site, syndicate elsewhere. That way, your website is the source of truth and the other places are like museums you curate to.

Why should you go thru the trouble? Because these social networks own your content and your audience and won't hesitate a second to drop you if they deem fit.

Re: Substack writers, you need a website

#222

Post by dpkirchner »

willy_k wrote: post #218
incompatible wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, tolerate Nazis, give them a place to share their words, let them be part of the mainstream, let them take part in elections, play their dirty tricks and form paramilitaries and win control of government. It's a shame that that leads to certain groups, like Jews, LGBTQ, non-whites, or immigrants getting exterminated, but that's just the price you have to pay for free speech.

That’s backwards. Society does not move forward despite free speech, rather because of it. The only way to truly move past harmful ideas and ideologies is to show those who would otherwise subscribe how dumb they are. You can try to quell them, but that just lends to their appeal, and results in those that do subscribe being more extreme and doing more extreme things. For a real world example, take someone who thinks…

If this were true, far right mainstream media (eg Newsmax, NY Post) would not have the viewership and readership they enjoy.

In any case, few people here (and in general, IME) are suggesting that Nazis should have no platform whatsoever, only that we shouldn't choose to associate ourselves with those platforms -- especially when there are so many perfectly viable alternatives that don't occasionally promote Nazis to your readers.

Re: Substack writers, you need a website

#223

Post by a57721 »

ryukoposting wrote: post #189

I wrote this for my own self-hosted blog a few years ago: > My goal is to write good blog posts, and µstack exists for the purpose of making it as easy as possible for me to write good blog posts. As far as I can tell, there’s no meaningful correlation between the quality of work published on a website, and the amount of engagement that website receives. I could track clicks or traffic or RSS feed queries, but that d…

I feel like the internet used to be "cool that way", but it's not anymore. You don't do stuff for "engagement", but you probably want some audience and feedback, otherwise why bother publishing your work at all. Nowadays almost all audience got sucked up by the black hole of social media and LLMs, and most authors just scream into the void.

Re: Substack writers, you need a website

#224

Post by Groxx »

jimbokun wrote: post #193
jonahx wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The social networks are big because they have genuine utility. I think this is mostly wrong, and that the social networks are big primarily because they spent money at the right time to create entrenched network effects that allow them to rent-seek ever after. The quality and innovation of the services themselves (especially simple sites like twitter/X) is not the moat. At a technical level, most are easily clone-a…

The network effects ARE the genuine utility.

I'm not sure I'd describe cartel behavior as utility.

Re: Substack writers, you need a website

#225

Post by sebastiennight »

simonw wrote: post #30

I'm pretty happy with the way I've resolved this. I publish everything to my personal blog first, then once a week I copy and paste it all into a Substack newsletter. I get to use Substack for email distribution (which would cost me hundreds of dollars a month using most other solutions, I have 66,000 subscribers now) but my own blog stays the original point of truth. Here's the tool I use for the copy-pasting: https…

Hi Simon, I'm not sure I get it completely.

If I get it, you're basically using Substack as an email platform. So the blog (the "original") can use Wordpress, Ghost, whatever ; and this is the canonical place that all articles go to. But then you duplicate the content onto Substack so it gets pushed out as emails.

My understanding of what it means:

- the blog doesn't have its own subscription system ; you link out to Substack for that. So you must be massively losing out on blog-driven subscriptions because of the much higher friction (vs having the pop-ups directly on the blog)?

- all of your content is duplicated between the real blog and the Substack copy. How do you avoid Substack cannibalizing all of your blog's traffic, given that they are a bigger domain possibly better optimized for SEO?

Re: Substack writers, you need a website

#226

Post by nickthegreek »

hungryhobbit wrote: post #124
nickthegreek wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author has the option to enable that or not.

And (judging by the number of Medium articles I've been turned away from) 95% of all authors leave it on.

Sure, but my comment was being given directly to a user who asked for a platform that allowed X, Y and Z. I was providing them with an answer that met their stated criteria. I don’t see how other people’s configuration is of any concern.

Re: Substack writers, you need a website

#228

Post by incompatible »

dpkirchner wrote: post #222
willy_k wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s backwards. Society does not move forward despite free speech, rather because of it. The only way to truly move past harmful ideas and ideologies is to show those who would otherwise subscribe how dumb they are. You can try to quell them, but that just lends to their appeal, and results in those that do subscribe being more extreme and doing more extreme things. For a real world example, take someone who thinks…

If this were true, far right mainstream media (eg Newsmax, NY Post) would not have the viewership and readership they enjoy. In any case, few people here (and in general, IME) are suggesting that Nazis should have no platform whatsoever, only that we shouldn't choose to associate ourselves with those platforms -- especially when there are so many perfectly viable alternatives that don't occasionally promote Nazis to…

The problem is not really Nazis saying despicable things, their so-called "free speech". The problem is that they are Nazis and will really do all these things if they get a chance. Why would you want to collaborate with Nazis, especially by giving them space on your platform where they can organize and publicize? Sure, collaborating with them in any other way is also bad, selling them food, giving them jobs, or whatever. It's not surprising that some people don't like collaborators any more than they like Nazis.

Re: Substack writers, you need a website

#229

Post by weird-eye-issue »

skippyfish wrote: post #6

Counterpoint from someone who's been publishing on the internet for decades: no one will visit your website. It's as simple as that. You need a push mechanism to reach readers. RSS could be it, but it's too niche. Social media is kinda it, but algorithmic feeds reward political clickbait and just because someone clicks "follow" or "subscribe" is not a guarantee that they will ever see your posts. Substack gives you a…

Yeah so I guess the hundreds of billions of page views from organic search every single month is just a total myth?

As somebody who has made a lot of money publishing on the internet you absolutely can get people to read your website organically but it takes specific strategies and you can't just write about whatever you want however you want and expect traffic.

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